Nato’s Endorsements for the SF 2016 Ballot

About this time of year in the election season, the people in my life realize that they had only been paying attention to a couple of contests and were blissfully unaware of all the other junk on the ballot. Since I am The Most Trusted Name in Politics (for my close personal friends and family), I am finally yielding to the clamoring demand for me to print a cheat sheet for my friends to take to the polls. Or to the bar where they fill out their absentee ballots.

There are lots of well-researched, thoughtful voter guides and slate cards that I like. Try the League of Pissed Off Voters, the SF Bay Guardian, the SF Public Press, Cal Matters, or for the East Bay local races, Oakland Rising. Yay nonprofit voter guides!

Meanwhile, here’s my take. Although there is a disgusting TWENTY-FIVE local and SEVENTEEN state measures on the ballot, most of them are uncontroversial. Some of them are dumb or wonky or not super-urgent. But here we are. The ones that are contested are because they represent a power struggle or political game, or they’re sneaky. Or all of the above. If you asked of our Supervisors and Mayor, what do we pay these people for? You’d be right.

General themes: I like new revenues, but prefer taxes to bonds, and prefer progressive taxes to regressive taxes, but I put up with all of it because I like what it pays for. Like, it’s better to decide to fund city services with funds that are not new debt. I don’t like budget set-asides because let the legislators fight about that.

Most of the time, following the campaign endorsements and money tells you all you need to know. Usually, everyone I like is on one side and everyone I don’t like is on the other side.

SF Candidates:

State Senate: Jane Kim

Supervisors: Sandy Fewer in District 1, Dean Preston in District 5, Hillary Ronen in District 9, and Kim Alvarenga in District 11. Progressives need to win three out of four of these races to maintain the current, highly-effective, Board majority.

School Board: Stevon Cook, Matt Haney, Mark Sanchez.

College Board: Rafael Mandelman, Tom Temprano, Shanell Williams.

San Francisco Propositions

Prop A: Local School District Bond — Yes. Raise property taxes a little for a $744 million bond to fix the schools. It also includes affordable housing funds so teachers don’t have to drive Lyft on the weekends.
Prop B: Renew the Parcel Tax for City College — Yes. City College is a huge public school used by a lot of people in San Francisco. They just dodged a bullet, and property owners can afford an extra $20 per year to get City College on its feet again.
Prop C: Bond to Make Loans to Buy and Fix Affordable Housing — Yes. Apparently $260 million in bonds are left over from a 1992 housing bond. This would allow the City to issue those bonds mostly to make loans to people to buy multiple-unit buildings to make them permanently affordable, and to do seismic retrofits of existing units.
Prop D: Let’s Elect Our Elected Officials — Yes. You know how we right now a Mayor who will ultimately serve in office for ten years who has presided over an affordability crisis, given away the store to big corporations, let corruption and police misconduct run rampant, but has moneyed interests behind him who will spend unlimited money to maintain his agenda? And how he was first installed by six Supervisors and Gavin Newsom pledging not to run again, but then in a clearly orchestrated operation was “persuaded” to change his mind? Remember Mayor Willie Brown’s “triple play” appointment patronage operation. Let’s not do that again.
Prop E: Make the City Responsible for Street Trees — Yes. This is a tiny parcel tax on property owners, that is a progressive tax because it’s based on the actual size of the property, to raise like $18 million so the City can take over maintaining the trees.
Prop F: Vote 16! — Yes. Absolutely let sixteen year olds vote. If adults who are still undecided about a presidential election two weeks before election day are allowed to vote, literally any random sixteen-year old is at least that mature.
Prop G: Rename the Office of Citizen Complaints — Yes. This is a cosmetic change but it’s fine.
Prop H: Create a Public Advocate — Yes. For fuck’s sake it should be someone’s job to deal with corruption. Don’t let the nice view fool you: San Francisco is and always has had a Tammany Hall-level of corruption. If this job can help root it out, I’m all for it.
Prop I: Set Aside Funding for Seniors & People with Disabilities — Yes. Grudgingly. I dislike set-asides but this one seems important.
Prop J: Set Aside Funding for Homelessness & Transportation — Yes. Funded by Prop K. Money for good things that need money. You can’t complain about homeless people in SF if you won’t pay for services to them.
Prop K: Sales Tax to Cover Prop J’s Set Aside — Yes. I am generally in favor of all revenue measures. This is a regressive tax, but since San Francisco is increasingly a city of the rich, they can afford it.
Prop L: Shift 3 of 7 MTA Board Appointments from Mayor to the BoS — Yes. We get better government with checks and balances. The MTA, which runs Muni, has been a rubber stamp for the Mayor and it needs some independence.
Prop M: Create Oversight Commission & Kill Realtor Props P & U — Yes. I addressed this in my column. The Mayor’s Office of Economic and Workforce Development is the proverbial back room where the deals are made with developers. Prop M would combine with the Mayor’s Office of Housing and move them out of the Mayor’s Office and under the our Commission to get some transparency about their operations. More importantly, Prop M would squash the realtor-backed Props P and U.
Prop N: Non-Citizen Voting in School Board Elections — Yes. Families have been priced out of San Francisco, and white families have decided to re-segregate the school district by bailing out for private schools. This means that immigrants are over-represented in San Francisco public schools, and they should get a say.
Prop O: Special Favor for Lennar Corp on Hunter’s Point Office Development — No. Unlike a lot of progressives, I’m not opposed on principle to letting Lennar build office space faster on their project. In 2008, Lennar made a deal to develop the shipyard, with the current policies. We voted on it at the time. If their ability to finish the project depended on additional amendments, they should have put that in the original proposition. The whole premise is that they were going to clean up the environmental hazards in exchange for developing the site. They haven’t done it. Lennar is already behind schedule, above cost, and they are apparently falsifying soil samples about how much they’ve actually cleaned. Also, this measure has much wider implications on office construction across San Francisco than just the shipyard. Let them keep their end of the deal and come back to voters.
Prop P: Snarl Affordable Housing in Red Tape — No. Realtors are allegedly trying to improve housing by requiring three bids for projects, except that because not all projects get three bids from developers, this would mainly serve to slow affordable housing construction. I don’t think it’s really what they want, they just want to punish San Francisco for passing other pro-tenant legislation.
Prop Q: Ban Tents on Sidewalks — No. This is unnecessary political grandstanding from Mark Farrell. Remember how Sit/Lie was going to solve homeless in 2010? Or the ban on aggressive panhandling in 2007? Or care not cash in 2003? Yeah. Like clockwork, politicians representing rich constituents push wedge issue legislation to scapegoat the homeless that won’t actually work. For more on this, read my column about it.
Prop R: Create a department of neighborhood crimes in the police department. — No. This is political grandstanding by Scott Weiner, to try to focus police resources on “quality of life” crimes. I thought police precincts were supposed to be the neighborhood crime units for that neighborhood.
Prop S: Reallocate Hotel Tax to Arts and Homeless Family Services — Yes. The Hotel Tax is supposed to support stuff related to making San Francisco a world-class cultural destination by funding local arts institutions. Yet the City has for years been pulling money from the Hotel Tax away from arts and into the General Fund. This would increase funding to local arts organizations, which would help maintain an arts community in San Francisco.
Prop T: Restrict Campaign Contributions from Lobbyists — Yes. This was put on the ballot by the Ethics Commission to stop the appearance or reality of “pay to play” politics. It would stop lobbyists from making donations or bundle donations to politicians within ninety days of lobbying them, and stop the giving of gifts entirely.
Prop U: Redefine Affordable Housing — No. This is another realtor power play to reduce affordable housing my raising the income requirements. Therefore, it redefines affordable as being less affordable, and therefore more profitable.
Prop V: One Cent an Ounce Soda Tax — Yes. The soda industry is gross. It’s not a grocery tax. After the revolution, there will be no Mountain Dew. May as well start now.
Prop W: Luxury Property Transfer Tax — Yes. This increases the transfer tax on property over $5 million, the new money of which is intended to pay to make City College free. It would mostly affect big office buildings and the few homes above that price. I’m for everything that makes real estate less profitable.
Prop X: Preserve Industrial and Arts Spaces — No. For the last fifteen years, people have been trying to preserve “PDR in the NEMIZ.” The Nothing that is real estate speculation has gobbled up all light industrial uses and arts spaces. We like artisans! We like people doing things other than looking at computers! We don’t like ballot box urban planning. The trade group that would supposedly benefit opposes the legislation. Give the process a chance.

Prop RR: $3.5 Billion Bond to Repair & Upgrade BART — Yes. Remember how BART workers went on strike a few years ago and the entire Bay Area rose up in one torrent of righteous indignation about workers daring to inconvenience commuters? And then how for the next three years there have been problem after problem with delays and system shutdowns for one reason or another? Maybe the problem wasn’t the workers. Maybe the problem is that BART was built decades ago and is due for an upgrade. Everyone from Mussloini to Angela Davis agree it’s better when the trains run on time.

State Propositions

Prop 51: School Construction & Repair Bond — No. There are weird details about this, and the schools aren’t even pushing for it.
Prop 52: Wonky Hospital Medi-Cal Matching Fees — Yes. This helps hospitals get matching funds from the federal government for Medi-Cal care.
Prop 53: Require Even More Bonds On the Ballot — No. From the same bastards that crippled funding for education in Prop 13, this makes it harder for governments to fund any projects without going to the voters. Not everything should be on the ballot.
Prop 54: Publish Bills 72 Hours Before a Vote — Yes. Even though this was put on the ballot by a Republican donor, the California Legislature sucks on open government practices. Getting videos of hearings would be good.
Prop 55: Extension of Income Tax on the 1% — Yes. This continues an existing tax on people earning over $250,000 a year, and a tax that has been essential to fund education.
Prop 56: Tax E-cigs & Bump Up Cigarette Tax — Yes. While regressive, taxing cigarettes reducing use, and extending that to the new e-cig market seems wise.
Prop 57: Progressive Parole Reform — Yes. As part of an ongoing move to reduce our bloated prison system, this would make it easier for non-violent offenders to get parole and restore discretion to judges about when to try minors as adults.
Prop 58: Allow Multilingual Education in Public Schools — Yes. This would repeal the ban on bilingual education passed in 1998. Let’s plunge headlong into our multilingual multiracial future together!
Prop 59: Repeal Citizens United — Yes. Advisory, but it gets California on record for repeal of Citizens United, the Supreme Court decision that helps shadowy corporate donors spend unlimited funds on elections.
Prop 60: Require Condoms in Adult Films — No. Genderqueer feminist pornstar and Nato Green podcast guest Jiz Lee opposes this, which is all I need to know. It would publish the real name and address of everyone in porn, which would not be used by creeps at all. It would also let anyone watching porn without a condom file a lawsuit. Not a complaint. A lawsuit. So a lot of weirdos would start watching porn for the lawsuits.
Prop 61: Prescription Drug Pricing — Yes. This would limit how much the State pays for prescription drugs. The Pharmaceutical industry has spent over $100 million to oppose it, with very confusing ads about how it hurts veterans. Bernie Sanders supports it.
Prop 62: Repeal the Death Penalty — Yes. This is linked to Prop 66. Repeal the death penalty so we don’t execute innocent people and save the state $150 million a year.
Prop 63: Gun Control — Yes. This is the opening salvo in Gavin Newsom’s campaign for Governor, which I hate, but the thing itself is good. More gun control.
Prop 64: Marijuana Legalization — Yes. Stop arresting people for nonsense and generate millions in new tax revenue and business activity. About time.
Prop 65: Redirect Money from the Disposable Bag Fee — No. This was put on the ballot by the Bag-Industrial Complex to confuse you, and to bury Prop 67.
Prop 66: Faster Death Penalty — No! This would speed up executions so there are fewer appeals. The problem with the death penalty isn’t that it’s too slow, but that it’s gross and they can execute innocent people. Between this and Prop 62, the one with the most votes wins.
Prop 67: Protect the Plastic Bag Ban — Yes. This upholds the ban on plastic bags, for the planet.